


conscious, deliberate mistakes

by faintlight



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/F, Grieving, Hurt No Comfort, Post Adventure 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 00:46:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19121137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faintlight/pseuds/faintlight
Summary: While in quarantine, Sigrun thinks about everything she did wrong.





	conscious, deliberate mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> because i just really needed a sad fic about sigrun grieving in quarantine :)

A four-week quarantine was possibly the worst thing Sigrun could think of, after this mission. All she wanted was to lose herself in work, abandon thought and let her body run through the motions it knew so well, so deeply. The downtime they’d had in waiting for the ship had been bad enough, allowing plenty of free moments for Sigrun’s mind to wander, picking at each mistake of the mission. 

But an uninterrupted, month-long stretch of nothing to do and limited contact with others gave her the perfect opportunity to stew over the shit she’d just gone through. 

With the burning guilt and anxiety from the near-death of the two little guys resolved, Sigrun’s mind had nothing to work with but the thought she’d tried her hardest to hold off on for so long: Tuuri. 

Sigrun could number the stars with the ways she’d failed the little Finn, beginning with her inability to secure a proper tank for the mission, and ending with, well, the obvious. Sigrun felt like she hadn’t stopped failing Tuuri, was disrespecting her memory with every step she took away from her bonfire. She could hardly bring herself to look at the little scout, thought Emil told her that they were getting on as well as anyone could have expected. 

Sigrun knew in these kinds of situations you were probably supposed to talk to someone, get your feelings out or some bullshit, but who could she possibly turn to? Discussing it with her team would be exposing weakness unfitting for a captain, and the same went for anyone she knew back in Dalsnes. She was too strong, too proud, too used to hiding away her feelings that didn’t affect her job. She cursed herself, every moment she sat in her glass-walled cell, for each and every choice in her life that had led up to Tuuri’s death. Each time she’d turned away help, each night she’d spent unable to sleep, nursing an injury she hadn’t disclosed to a medic, each scar she’d let herself take rather than being seen as unfit to lead, every time she’d denied help, every relationship she’d ended before it could get serious, every joke she’d made about the weakness of civilians, every foolhardy mistake she’d made that had only hurt her. 

She’d spent a lifetime building up her tolerance for any kind of pain, relying on others who did the same. She’d known death before, watched her fellow warriors bleed out before her eyes, but there had been honor in that, and the knowledge that they would meet again. They’d taken up this job knowing full well they would die in battle, die protecting their people. That was a part of life for her, and hard as it had been, she’d accepted it.

But she couldn’t accept this. While probably, her logical brain reminded her, Tuuri knew that she was going into something very dangerous, signing up for a mission to the Silent World, that didn’t stop the guilt from seeping in. As the captain, as an immune hunter, as the most qualified person on the team to kill trolls, Sigrun had let Tuuri down. As a teammate, as a friend, as- as something more that Sigrun couldn’t name without nearly crying, she had failed her in the most basic of ways. Wasn’t that something people promised to each other, when they had that kind of relationship? To protect one another, to stay together, sick or healthy, happy or sad, only letting death part them? While they’d never made a promise like that, out loud, and in any kind of defined way, Sigrun had felt that instinctively, deep within her, that she would do everything she could to protect Tuuri. 

And yet she couldn’t. 

Tuuri had told her not to blame herself, not to fault anyone or anything, that they’d done all they could and honestly, it was incredible how high the success rate of the mission had been so far. None of this helped, or made the massive hole in Sigrun’s heart stop aching. 

Mikkel, in his frustratingly all-knowing manner, tried to help keep Sigrun’s mind occupied. Though she’d never explicitly told him what went on between herself and Tuuri, he wasn’t an idiot. She knew he’d seen the looks they gave each other over dinner, their twenty-minute disappearances every once in a while, how fiercely Sigrun always tried to protect the little Finn, how she was the first thing on her mind. Mikkel offered a number of games, but neither of them could quite get their heart into it. 

Sigrun’s discovery of a bookshelf in her quarantine chamber nearly made her burst into tears. She’d never been one for books, for words, preferring to fight rather than read, but the concrete, tactile reminder of Tuuri almost broke her. The night after she’d found the books, Sigrun had waited until everyone had seemed to be asleep before finally allowing hot tears to stream down her cheeks. Her mind was flooded with images of Tuuri reading, exciting over whatever dusty volumes Sigrun and Emil had uncovered that day; of her insistently pushing language sheets into the hands of all the crew (which Sigrun had let Mikkel explain at her for about five minutes before she found something better to do, but now desperately wished she had kept); of the care with which each stack of books was bundled up and placed precariously in the cabin; of Tuuri’s thirst for knowledge so strong she disregarded the danger she placed herself in; and as always, the grief, the all-consuming guilt, each and every way Sigrun had let her down. 

If Mikkel noticed her particularly red eyes the next morning, he didn’t comment on it. He also didn’t remark on Sigrun actually picking up a book (the most basic one she could find, a distraction that wouldn’t achingly remind her of Tuuri) and attempting to read it. It had been so long since she’d read anything longer or more complicated than a road sign or a map, and she found her eyes and mind getting tired after ten minutes. She wondered how skalds could do this all day, before her mind wandered back to one particular skald who wouldn’t be reading anything ever again. She pretended to take a nap to hide the tears welling in her eyes. 

The remainder of the days passed achingly slowly. Sigrun found herself agreeing with Emil’s constant complaints about wishing for a private room. At least there, she could grieve properly without affecting the rest of the team. All she wanted was the ability to just let herself go, drop all her walls and facades and release the sorrow that had been building inside her for nearly two months now, ever since that fateful troll attack. She’d thought, in a particularly bitter moment, that maybe the grief after Tuuri passed would be easier, as she was basically grieving her before she even died. But the shock, the massive ice-cold wave of realization that had hit her when Lalli dashed out of the camp, had washed away that resignation. The idea that Tuuri, who had gotten closer to her heart than anyone else, had guarded her fear and pain up until the final moment, just to spare them all the sorrow, drove daggers into Sigrun each time she dared to think about it. 

She respected Tuuri’s decision, preferring to take charge of her own destiny than risking becoming a troll, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. To rationalize her utter despair. It was lucky, she’d realized a week or so in, that they’d been close to the pickup point when Tuuri had left. If they had been more than a few days’ walk away, Sigrun didn’t know if she would’ve been able to make it, with her mild infection, her raging guilt and bottomless sorrow. Mikkel had told her that the measure of her strength was not whether mistakes happened, but how she responded to them. Sigrun had always thought of herself as strong and capable, not one to let emotions get in the way of her leadership, but Tuuri had disarmed her in every way. 

So small, unable to kiss Sigrun without standing on her toes. A soft, assured voice that she only raised in dire situations. And the sharpest mind that Sigrun had possibly ever known, her desire to learn absolutely everything she could despite the risks. Each characteristic lined up perfectly to make Sigrun weak to her, and her weak to the world. Her endless optimism despite the harsh childhood she wouldn’t talk about. Her resolve to not leave behind any mistakes, to make sure the crew could go on without her (but Sigrun couldn’t, not in any way that mattered). She was an infinite sky, shining and darkening but always, always with the promise of a new sunrise, new warmth, new beginnings and new hope. And though the place where the sky met the sea was demarcated with a sharp line, her affair with the water had resulted in nothing but endless ripples and gut-wrenching static. 

Some nights Sigrun exhausted herself enough with grief to fall right asleep, but as the quarantine reached its end, sleep found her less and less. Her body began to remember that it had functions outside of crying and hunching over in a chair. The glass walls began to torture her in a different way. 

In the space between the attack and Tuuri’s disappearance, Sigrun had felt a sudden rush of urgency, in a sickening way. She felt, somewhere deep inside of her, that their time together was running out, no matter how optimistic she tried to be about a cure. Tuuri had felt it too, their hands finding each other more often, Sigrun joining her in the makeshift quarantine. It was a cruel irony that the only time they were sure not to be interrupted was in such dire circumstances. Still, they made the most of the time they had, both of them crying at some point during their moments together. Sigrun had felt absurd, her head between Tuuri’s thighs, trying to wipe her tears away. But each time she touched her, something at the back of her mind reminded her that she had a limited amount of time left with Tuuri. Tuuri, too, just a few days before she’d run away, had broken into sobs with Sigrun inside her, managing between hiccups that she wanted this, she wanted to feel everything she possibly could before the end, that there were really no risks now, so it was fine. Somehow, they’d finished, despite neither of them being in the right emotional state. 

That had been over a month ago, now. Sigrun’s body seemed confused by the sudden lack of contact or release. She found herself rethinking those moments, and the ones before Tuuri was infected, when hot skin pressing together hadn’t been any kind of sin, hadn’t felt like a punishment, but rather a rush of secret joy, a hidden pleasure that existed only in their private world. Her body remembered, could place each kiss, each brush of fingers, could tell her exactly where Tuuri’s mouth had been. She ached for it, dreamed about it, but could do nothing to alleviate the pain- physical or emotional. 

This was her punishment, Sigrun supposed, for fucking up so colossally. For each time she’d let her eyes linger too long on Tuuri’s bright smile, for each brush of their hands unseen by the others, each grin she’d flashed at Tuuri, each time she hadn’t immediately stamped down her feelings, each soft kiss, each heated contact in a secluded corner, each sweet thought she’d thought while letting her gaze drift over the shape of the woman next to her, each and every word she’d given Tuuri about how she felt, some meaningful, some tumbling out in laughter, all sincere, all full of an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself in so long. 

And this was her divine retribution. She was meant to be a warrior, not a lover, not someone who sat up all night writing poetry for a crewmate. Her heat was meant for the adrenaline rush of battle, her sweat for the exertion of killing, her smiles for the glory of victory, not for pleasure, for sex, for love. She wasn’t built for those things. Fate had its way of reminding you, however cruelly, of your purpose. Sigrun had strayed from the path set out for her, and she’d paid more dearly than she ever could have imagined. 

After what had felt like an absolute eternity, the crew was finally released from their quarantine. Sigrun let herself be happy, for once, that five out of the six had made it out alive and relatively well, and soon they’d all go back to their ordinary lives. She could drown herself in the gore and blood of hunting, and stop thinking so goddamn much. She still didn’t feel up to talking to anyone about it, and knew she likely wouldn’t be able to for a long while. As always, she soldiered on, the weight of her failure felt in every step. 

On her way back to Dalsnes, Sigrun ducked into a bookstore and picked up a book- _Finnish for Beginners_.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! find me @thiswintersky on tumblr or @mudlesbian on twitter


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